Sin taxes

x6

I think you missed the part where I said you were welcome to prove that you never caused any such harm, but I felt that would be more expensive.

Or do you believe that alcohol has no external costs at all? Do you really need proof of that?

x4

I think you have added a condition there. But in reality, reasons do exist. You may not agree, you may not support them, but do not pretend they don't exist.

edited 8th Jun '11 9:22:11 AM by blueharp

Maybe in individual cases, you're not harming anyone (and if so, good for you). But when you're talking about taxes, and (in general) things that affect society as a whole, you'll need to take a look at it in terms of statistics. How many cases of, say, drunk driving? How many people are affected severely by second-hand smoke? How much is it costing the government to deal with these sorts of things?

(Which I can't look up myself because I really should be going to bed soon. Sorry about that.)

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

No, because you pay a rate that you are then extending if you are drinking. *shrug* Say someone doesn't drink anything ever and you both pay into the NHS, you eventually get liver damage that is partially exacerbated by drinking (hypothetical "you" ofc) you have helped to finance that through your own drinking and the person who has never drunk doesn't have to pay extra.

Hyperbole on healthcare costs? How so? Statistics clearly show smokers cost the system way more on average. Basically you're saying "let's everybody pay the same taxes no matter how much they make use of the social services in our society". To an extent I might agree but lifestyle choices that cost the system more should be taxed more heavily. That's how all taxes work, either to disincentivise an activity or to at least get money to pay to clean up after it. Pollution tax for instance (carbon or other toxic taxes) work under the same logic.

You pay your dues, which includes sin taxes :)

I'm implying that for the most part I'm a consequentialist, whereas the words Savage Heathen chose to use condemned sin taxes in deontological terms. If I don't share his ideology, and therefore don't in principle oppose sanctimoniousness, unfairness, abuse, or degradation, then his criticism of sin taxes has no relevant content for me.

And you're doing the same thing as he is. I thought I had already established back in the libertarianism thread that to me, abstract principles like freedom are only a means to an end. I'm opposed to totalitarianism because I don't like its consequences, perhaps because there are valuable ends that cannot be achieved without a certain level of freedom.

Drunk driving is prohibitted. Similarly, beating your wife while drunk is prohibitted. We should fight those instead of limitting personal freedoms

edited 8th Jun '11 9:22:47 AM by nzm1536

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

So you're saying you want the freedom to drive drunk and beat your wife? Or do you want to rephrase that?

Because I don't think you meant that, but it is how it parses.

edited 8th Jun '11 9:24:06 AM by blueharp

Alright, so lets say we slap a big Tax on alcohol. That won't stop an alcoholic from drinking, and anyone who says it will has probably never seen an alcoholic. No, it won't stop an alcoholic from drinking himself to death, but it WILL send more alcoholics into crushing poverty and ultimatley worsen the conditions that leads to people becoming alcoholics. It'll also make the ignorantly self-rightous feel better and raise more money for some pencil pusher to waste.

Not a good trade off, to say the least.

That's not even remotely close to what he said.

edited 8th Jun '11 9:25:43 AM by TheBatPencil

And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)

Ok, let's say we have no taxes on alcohol, that means the rest of us pay the consequences of dealing with the alcohol consumers. Yay, you are taxing the rest of us.

No thank you.

>So you're saying you want the freedom to drive drunk and beat your wife? Or do you want to rephrase that?

I also want to kick puppies and eat babies. And you want to learn to read

>Ok, let's say we have no taxes on alcohol, that means the rest of us pay the consequences of dealing with the alcohol consumers. Yay, you are taxing the rest of us.

False dichotomy coming from an assumption that curing alcoholics has to be funded publically

edited 8th Jun '11 9:27:50 AM by nzm1536

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

Yes, and that is just as much a choice on there part as anything else isn't it?

I think we just read your statement wrongly dude.

And who else is going to try and cure alcoholics? Public money should be put forward to help people like that and the programs should be widely advertised.

edited 8th Jun '11 9:29:08 AM by JosefBugman

I know you weren't trying to say that, that's why I suggested you rephrase it. It's really bad writing on your part. Is it so hard for you to accept that maybe you could have expressed yourself better? Or did you not even get what I was saying was a suggestion that you misspoke? Doesn't that require me to recognize what you meant to say?

And who is talking about dealing solely with treating alcoholism? That's not the costs I worry about actually. I worry about other things, like having to have police officers on patrol, about having to have utility poles or mailboxes repaired, along with numerous other costs of consuming alcohol. You keep running back to treatment, when that is just the harm an individual does to themselves, without bothering to give one iota of thought to the harm done to the rest of us.

edited 8th Jun '11 9:32:53 AM by blueharp

Any damage caused by an individual should be repaired (or repayed) by the said individual. Eo T

And what was so hard to understand in my post? It's meaning was: drinking is a crime, we should punish people for crimes caused while drinking and not for the drinking itself

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

x3 Addiction is an illness. A stupid illness, I grant you, but like any illness it cannot be fixed by throwing people into the doldrums to save yourself a few pennies every month. And that is what a tax on things like alcohol would do, further entrap the vulnerable and those in need in an ever deeper cycle of drink and poverty. In additon, those of us who enjoy the odd drink get screwed over to make the sanctimonious feel better about themselves.

edited 8th Jun '11 9:35:58 AM by TheBatPencil

And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)

And if they don't have the knowledge or money for repairs, the money and labor have to come from somewhere.

Sorry, but it turns out that that just isn't efficient, because we can't manage to completely keep track of everybody. A lot of taxes are like that. Don't like it? Come up with a system to fairly asses costs and benefits.

And the problem with what you wrote is that you referred to two crimes, and then said we should fight them, with a follow-up phrase about personal freedom, which parses as opposing those things being criminalized.

It's really an awkward choice. Try:

"Those are the crimes we should worry about"

Well, gee, then I guess we should have treatment programs besides just the costs. But me, I don't see the taxes as being solely for treatment, so non-issue.

Your phrasing does not come across that way, really, you chose a poorer form of expression than you could have.

edited 8th Jun '11 11:31:52 AM by blueharp

If you don't have money, you have to earn it. Or borrow it. Or go to prison for not paying your debts

Beating people up and drunk driving is not a personal freedom. Drinking is. Anyway, there should be no punishment without the crime. I've drunk some alcohol in my life and never committed a crime under influence + I'm not an addict

edited 8th Jun '11 9:42:00 AM by nzm1536

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

Then society is still made to bear the costs.

Yay, thanks for the taxes.

I look at sin taxes as a specific form of luxury tax since, like Jewelry, these are taxes on non-necessity items.

I would honestly prefer it if taxes on luxuries were raised to a point where taxes on necessities (Food, shelter, etc.) were completely unneccesary.

And yes, this would include luxuries that I partake in, such as various types of media.

Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!

It is possible to live with lower taxes on both luxuries in necessities. It just requires small goverment

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

The answer to everything is not smaller government. For instance without the various governmental oversight organisations your neccesities could be filled with maggots and other stuff

Not really (would you actually buy something with maggots in it? do you think you wouldn't be able to find things without maggots in them?), but that's the wrong thread for this

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

What if its all you can get? With large companies providing meat etc it becomes easier to just bribe everyone in government than it is to maintain strict health standards.

But this is rapidly shading off topic.

I oppose sin taxes. Or more precise: I oppose exessive sin taxes.
I live in a country where the price of alcoholics, smoke, and a lot of other things are artificially inflated to 3-8x times their price compared to a country that does not have such exessive sin taxes. It creates a lot of silly culture, and we also do have some bad regulations on the top of that.
Nevermind we also have something close to a ban on importing cars due ridiculess taxes on car imports....
Lets say sin taxes are legal. It should be limited to 5% of price, but it is illegal underover a amount of 100€.
And a friendly reminder: Sin taxes are different than marked regulations.

A guy called dvorak is tired. Tired of humanity not wanting to change to improve itself. Quite the sad tale.

You keep talking about "paying for costs on their own" but you aren't paying for any of the costs. Do you pay for the property damage you do when smoking? Do you pay for the effects of second hand smoke? Do you pay for the extra policing? Do you pay for the opportunity cost of a doctor having to spend his time fixing your liver instead of treating other people's illnesses?

There is a dichotomy here and it is opportunity cost. You talk about "sin taxes will make people who engage in those vices poorer", but you completely neglect the fact that those sin taxes go toward programs that reduce those vices in the first place. For instance, Ontario has massive cigarette taxes and with that money, drove down smoking rate from the high 30s to the low 10s and now it is one of the lowest smoking rates in the world. Without the sin taxes to pay for those programs, we'd not have done so and the literally tens of billions of dollars saved on healthcare costs make the province weather the current economic storm just a little better. That's important because it directly impacts my salary and my job opportunities.